Are You Ready?
by Ember Sage
Summary: An all-human story about the love between one couple, even through times of most agonizing heartache. A story of the everlasting love between Alice and Jasper. A one-shot, bitter-sweet, canon AxJ. Please enjoy.


**I am back! At least for the time being... I apologize for my extremely long writing hiatus, and I hope that some of you noticed my absence, possibly. :D Anyway, it feels good to be writing again, and I hope you enjoy this one-shot. It can be considered as depressing, but I personally consider it more bitter sweet than anything. It is an all human story, and if I remember correctly the first and only all human story I have ever completed. It is canon Alice and Jasper. I hope you enjoy it. **

**-Ember**

**Disclaimer: I am not the wonderful Stephanie Meyer.**

The world is a strange place. It is filled with life, and death, and then repeats itself over and over again. The repetition keeps it spinning round, and is often conceived as "the way things were meant to be". That it can't be slowed, it cannot be altered, and we are sentenced to be swept away in the cycle until it is our own time to pass.

But if you break the earth down and down again, things will seem less ordinary. More or less. You can separate the population into cultures and histories, homes and descent. You can judge someone by who they were yesterday, who they are today, and who they will become tomorrow.

And you can picture all of the world's people in your head, and you will see nameless blurs of complexions.

And you can look at that big picture, and you can see the death and destruction and the pain that our kind has caused.

But maybe, just maybe, if you look a little closer at the individual person, each of their lives, you might see that this world still does have some good in it after all. That maybe there is hope for us all.

It's an exceptionally cool night in July in southern Alabama. If you listen closely, real closely, you might be able to hear the hum of the hospital's air conditioning, the soft purr of the appliances, the bubbling of the pots in the kitchen, the murmur of voices in neighboring rooms, and the various groans and ever steady whir of the many pieces of equipment.

The sky is an explosion of a magnificent array of blues and oranges and scarlets and velvet salmon and fiery corn colors and silky indigos. The air is warm, and the gentle breeze whispers softly of sparkling waters and twinkling stars promised to the darkening sky.

But still, there is a certain weight that hangs in the air. There is a twinge in the atmosphere that tweaks its inhabitants' feelings so slightly many do not take notice of its presence. But even if it does go unnoticed, it is still there.

Somewhere in the hospital, a piano is being played. The pianist taps the same note again and again, each time adding another so that the melody is nothing more than a collage of something different but still completely the same.

A man climbs wearily up a flight of stairs in a forgotten, desolate corridor. The metal rings beneath the leather of his boots, and the spiraling echoes of the sound carries down until it evaporates into the dawning evening.

His warm, calloused hands are clenching the insides of his worn jacket, of which the bottom hem is so frayed from wear that it cannot no longer be called a hem, but merely a line of lingering strings, pulling each time on the very structure and fabric of the coat.

The man's hair hangs over his blue, ocean blue eyes. His tanned skin hints of times of physical labor in the scorching Alabama summer heat. The creases in his otherwise smooth forehead are ever more evident than usual, and his tawny eyebrows are furrowed in a look of concern that seems not too foreign to the man's facial structure.

He opens the door to the stairwell that leads out into the hallway of the fourth floor, left wing. The door whooshes closed behind him, and the evidence of where he had come from disappeared. He stood for a moment, staring down the long, long passage. At the end of the hallway was a lone window, marking the end of this corridor and the long beginning of another.

And in this window a single pot was placed on the hollowed ledge, and it was cracked and weathered and glued back together again. The soil placed inside was as rich as the dirt anywhere else in the world. A single, white daisy grew in that pot. The stubs of other roots were evident, but only that one, lone flower stood tall and proud in that window sill. The sunlight shone proudly on that little plant, and the immaculate cleanliness of the flower punched a ray of hope into that hallway, among the bland, beige wallpaper, and the gray, gray tiles.

The man looks at that flower. He smiles softly after a moment, and lowered his gaze to the floor tiles once more. He began his walk down that hallway, until he reached the wooden door with the number 4-0-1 stamped in bold black. Below the numbers was a small silver plate that shimmered in the patch of sunlight in which it lay. The metal was warm beneath the man's dark fingers, but he took no notice of this as he traced the raised dots of the numbers above. He closed his eyes for a moment, briefly enough that his pale eyelashes barely dusted the surface of his tan cheeks.

The man rested his closed fist on the upper half of the door, and leant his forehead in. He took a few shaky, but slowly steadying breaths. Then he opened pulled back away and grabbed a hold of the shiny metallic handle. He pushed down and in, and stepped into the dimly lighted room.

There was a small woman sitting on the hospital bed. Her skin was pale beyond normalcy, and she had a light yellow beanie over her smooth, white scalp. Her arms were almost completely absent of any signs of the normal amount of fat, and various wires weaved in and around each limb. Her eyes brightened though, at the sign of this man, and she weakly lifted her trembling lips up into a half-smile, and greeted him while barely being able to whisper his name.

"Jasper," she rasped. Her cracked, bleeding lips formed the syllables to his name, and words came out of her petite mouth, yet the man did not acknowledge his title. He stood stoic, as if frozen in time.

The only sound in that room was the monotonous ticking of a standardized hospital clock, for it was a small town, and the hospital had not yet seen what all of the hubbub was about concerning digital ones. And so, the clock ticked on. Also, the whirring and the beeping of the machinery strewn around the tiny room. The only other sound that could be heard was the slight wheezing of the woman's breath, as she attempted to bring as much oxygen as she could into her lungs.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out…

And it was, as if time had frozen. The weak smile still stood on the woman's frail lips, and her eyes still sparkled in the slowly dimming light. The man stood, hands in pockets, and his shoulders were hunched. He looked strangely… defeated. As if he should be the one sitting in the bed instead of the petite woman.

"Jasper," the woman rasps out again, before her voice cracks and violent coughs rack her tiny frame. The man begins to walk toward her, but the woman coughs one last time, and says, "I'm fine." She smiles brightly up at him, as if he was the world itself.

The man looks doubtful, but stays where he is. Another moment of silence, of the clock, of the small woman's breathing, and the beeping machinery keeping that little woman alive.

"Come here, sit by me." She says finally, but weakly. The man stays where he is.

"Please," she says, still smiling, but she is pleading with him to join her.

The man, Jasper, nods stiffly and walks over to the side of her bed. He runs his calloused pointer finger along the material of the scratchy hospital sheets. The woman's lips lift once more into a smile, but it is more of a grimace as she struggles to slide herself over to the right side of the small bed.

Finally she accomplishes this task and gently pats the space on the bed beside her.

"Sit," she half says this, half commands the man to do so.

He nods slightly once more and carefully slid his lean self into the bed beside her. The woman nods approvingly. He settles in and she lowers her head to the place where his shoulder and neck met along his collarbone.

She smiles once more and looks up at him adoringly. He smiles back at her, while trying his hardest to ignore the burning sensation of coming tears in his eyes and of his entire being.

And suddenly, he feels the need to remain stoic, to avoid the coming onslaught of agony and soon to be loneliness, that he has to look anywhere, anywhere but her eyes. He looks over her shoulder to her bedside where a small end table was placed. And it was adorned with paper cards that were inscribed with shaky writing that could be read as, "Get well soon", or, "We miss you". Small, amateur drawings accompanied the magic marker and crayons. And next to those small, feeble cards was a picture frame made of a soft bronze color. It was plain, and simple, and barely held the interest of one's eye. But inside the frame was a photograph that depicted a tall man with cornflower hair and a gentle expression with watery blue eyes, and next to him was a small woman with midnight silk hair in a bobbed cut that made her look much younger than she actually was.

"Jasper?" the woman asks, her brow furrowed slightly. She tugs lightly on her sleeve, and tries to catch his gaze. The man looks at her briefly before focusing on their intertwined hands.

"I'm sorry, Alice. I'm sorry that I could never give you what you wanted."

The woman's eyes softened and she coughed once lightly before telling the man, "Oh, Jasper. You were all that I ever wanted."

The man looked to his wife with furrowed eyebrows, and she continued.

"You were all that I ever wanted. I never needed anything more. The only thing that I wanted was to be able to love you for as long as I lived, and I thank you for fulfilling my wish."

And suddenly, the man began to shake. His large shoulders shook up and down, up and down as he locked eyes with the tiny woman. She stroked his soft cheek, hummed softly to him. Large, agonized tears ran down the man's tanned cheeks, and they made a salty river that flowed down his face and down his neck and to his heart.

"Alice," his voice cracked.

"Shh, it'll be alright. Everything will be alright," she whispered softly to her husband, carefully raising her other hand to gently pet his wavy hair.

"Nothing will ever be the same without you," he promised to her, tears still racing down his body.

She smiled softly, but said nothing as she continued to comfort him. They stayed this way for what must have seemed like an eternity to an outsider. But for the couple lying in that bed, it seemed no more than a minute, a second, and both wished furtively that things would never change, and they could stay this way, together, forever.

And soon the man's tears dried upon his cheeks, and the woman's breath grew more and more irregular. The man held his wife gently to his chest, and she pressed her small hand against it, feeling the regular thumping of his heart.

They had of course talked about if something like this were to ever happen. But they had never in a million years considered it would happen to them. They had so much against them, already.

The woman was a teacher, and the man worked at a construction site. They had a small house, and sometimes it seemed almost suffocating in their tiny home. But other times, most of the time actually, they didn't mind, because they enjoyed being close, very close to each other. They never seemed to have enough money, enough food around the house, or enough things to make their lives "enjoyable".

But as they would later learn, it really isn't all about humanly possessions. Or how big your house is. Or how nice your car is. Or who you know, or what job you have, or how much salary you make in a year. They knew, almost right from the start, it mattered how much you loved that other person. And that was all you really ever needed to be happy.

The heavy silence was broken as the clock rang out for the eleventh time that day. The woman spoke, and her whisper was barely heard by the man.

"Jasper, I'm so tired…." Her voice trailed off near the end, as her eyelids fluttered, and her mouth opened and closed slightly, as if trying to find the strength to speak more words.

"Shhh…" he hushed her soothingly, "It'll be okay, you just rest now sugar, you just rest." She didn't answer him or nod, she just laid her head back down on his chest, and slowly, slowly closed her eyes…

"Jasper?" she spoke one last time.

"Uh hmm?" he murmured softly to her.

"I love you…" The sound of her breathing was growing fainter, and her heart was slowing, slowing down…

"I love you too Alice," the man spoke again, and he resumed gently stroking the woman's yellow cap.

The woman's heart beats grew closer and closer together on the heart monitor, until all that remained was the steady, ever steady sound of the flat lining.

She was gone, her spirit freed from the physical restraints of her earthly body. Only the man remained, all alone, in that hospital bed with the scratchy sheets, holding the body of his wife, Alice.

And all around the hospital, sounds rang out in a seeming epiphany of agony and joy. A newborn child cried, as it was placed in its mother's tender arms. A scream rang through the building, its owner striking out against the silent indifference of the establishment. A sister cried as she was told that her brother was going to be all right after all. And if you listened closely, real closely, you would be taken to the sounds of the fourth floor, in the left wing, in room number 4-0-1. You would hear the feeble sound of a useless heart monitor and the hushed whoosh of cracking sheets. And then you would hear a tall man's sobs, racking through his entire body. That man wept out of agony and joy for the freedom of his wife's spirit. He wept for his newfound loneliness in this world, of the loss he had just endured. And then, he wept with thankfulness. Thankfulness that he had had the opportunity to experience just how beautiful the world could really be. He thanked whoever was up there for letting him to meet someone that convinced him that the world really was an okay place, and that maybe he could do something to make everything better. He wept for thankfulness for his passed wife, and for thankfulness that the world had been the home to such an angel as her. And he wept.

**I am hoping that I might have made some of you feel something while reading this, if it was sadness, joy, or anger about how poorly it was written. :D I really would appreciate it if you would review! Constructive critisism is warmly welcomed as well. :D **

**-Ember**


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